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Topic: shakedown (Read 2807 times)

HI!another regression topic!so..this year i'm "intensively" regressing my bees, or at least trying to do it :-D, so i have another question, i think that dee lusby perfers shakedown method for regression and i kind of get the big picture but..will my bees cope with it?

so...my bees are in two deeps, with a queen excludor in between. they've already built me lot's of comb but...ah well i'm a capitalist, LOL they'll call in the Union, hehe.anyway, could they cope if i took out all of the supers comb, moved the brood box combs up and let only one comb with the queen down bellow, so they'd be forced to build worker comb, and comb in general, for brood of course! now i'm worried because most of the comb-building season is gone..i have...maybe a month or so left, i think that it's up until...21. 6 on the summer solctice, the colonies slowly start to decrease in strenght so does the building.

have any good ideas on how to stimulate them to draw comb-besides feedeeing which i'm not gonna do-i want HONEY :-D

Not into going to small cells right now. But the March swarm gave me a chance to get some comb drawn. At the time I didn't have so many medium honey supers made up so the third one I put on was a deep. It is one I'll be taking off tomorrow. I have some other colonies that need a deep.I don't mind working with a deep full of honey, as long as I have some other deeps I can take half the frames and make it 5 frames each. Then they are still as heavy as a medium.doak

ok, i'll keep in mind, although would they leave the brood? because i don't know if i can actually call it shakedown.you see, if you remember, my hives are limited to two deeps, one is super one is broodnest. basicly i would be only forcing the bees to draw comb so the queen would have place to lay eggs in.to tell it in LR words if i was using 2 deepsremove and empty the upper deep, fill it with 10 frames-starter strips and put in the queen, put queen excludor over it, put the former brood chamber above the excludor. i hope you get the picture. and i would appreciate the opinion!

i think that this way i would also get more appropriately made brood nest.

The nurse bees will not abandon brood.What I would do if I wanted to do one box is put new frames with strips on bottom. put a queen excluder between the two. make sure the queen is on bottom. Also make sure to leave a exit for the drones."OR", you could do this when adding the second deep. They will build comb from a wax strip 3 times+ as fast as they would from Plastic foundation.Any time you're working with Bees, It is a good thing to look at all sides of the situation, "IF" you can find them.doak